


Remember me as you pass by

by darkrosaleen



Category: British Folklore & Mythology, Original Work
Genre: American History, Autumn, College, F/M, Folklore, Ghosts, Haunted Houses, Loyalty, New England, The Black Dog - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-31
Updated: 2018-10-31
Packaged: 2019-08-11 05:32:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16469699
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darkrosaleen/pseuds/darkrosaleen
Summary: Everyone said the gray house on Mill Street was haunted, but Ella didn't believe in ghosts.





	Remember me as you pass by

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Irusu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Irusu/gifts).



> _Remember me as you pass by,_  
>  As you are now, so once was I,  
> As I am now, so you must be,  
> Prepare for death and follow me. 
> 
> -Puritan gravestone

Everyone said the gray house on Mill Street was haunted. Ella didn't believe in ghosts, but everyone at Patterson had a story about a kid in their boyfriend's roommate's English class who saw something on a cold fall night last year.

Given the history of the house, it wasn't surprising. 33 Mill Street had been a frat house in the middle of the twentieth century, and there were countless, contradicting stories about murder and sex and devil worship. The house was built on the former grounds of a Puritan meeting house, which had supposedly been built on a thousand-year-old Algonquin burial ground. In the seventies, the headstones of the colonial graveyard were moved to the center of town, and rumor said they left all the bodies behind, rotting to dust under the unsuspecting feet of partying frat boys.

That was one of the more plausible rumors, but Ella decided not to tell her roommates that.

She'd fallen in love with the Mill Street house the moment she laid eyes on it. From the pointy turret to the dark, narrow windows, the house felt heavy with history, not like the eighties ranch she'd grown up in. Every room was worn in with chipped paint and creaking floors, and there was a constant chorus of unexplained knocks and cold drafts. If she believed in ghosts, Ella would probably say that the presence in the house was like a kind grandparent, something old and wise and comfortable.

The week Ella moved into 33 Mill Street, she received a card from her grandmother, which contained a jade charm on a red threaded tassel. She recognized the characters for protection, written next to _for the new house!_ in English.

Ella didn't believe in ghosts, but she kept the jade charm on her keychain, just in case.

-

There were all kinds of stories about what happened on Mill Street after dark. They ranged from dubious but plausible stories about muggers and aggressive frat boys, to fantastical tales about cursed burial mounds and giant dogs with glowing yellow eyes. Even Ella's skeptical friends seemed uneasy walking there at night, glancing nervously at the dark trees.

Ella was never afraid on Mill Street. She was scared of car accidents and wildfires, LA things, real things. Mill Street was much safer than the city she'd grown up in. 

Even the normal dangers of college life never seemed to happen at number 33. The house never got TPed, and the pumpkins they left on the front porch never got smashed—not even the animals touched them. None of their mail got stolen, and neighborhood thieves left their cars untouched, even when Ella forgot to lock her doors.

The house was always neat and well-kept, leaves swept from the walkway and boots neatly lined up in the foyer. Ella rarely saw her landlord, but he must have been coming by at least every other week, because the gutters were always clean and there was never any lint in the dryer. The only thing that never seemed to work properly was the WiFi, which only ran smoothly in the middle of the afternoon when everyone else was at class. Except for that (and the tendency of the doors and windows to violently rattle with wind at three in the morning), the house was nicer than the shiny new dorm Ella had lived in last year.

The boys upstairs reported the same things, and both apartments had assumed the other unit was responsible. No one lived in 33 Mill Street if they were easily spooked, so everyone had a laugh over it, organizing semi-regular potlucks and movie nights to give the ghosts privacy in the other apartment.

All the boys upstairs were cute, but Ella was drawn to Johnny. Tall and dark-haired, with freckles and golden brown eyes, Johnny was soft-spoken and quietly funny. He was interested in the same obscure history Ella was studying, and she could listen to him talk in his soft New England accent for hours. Just like Ella, he felt like an old soul.

-

For her history class, Ella was writing a paper on the old Puritan meeting house. There were plenty of primary source documents at the school library, and even more at City Hall, everything from woodcut illustrations of the old building to maps of the excavated graveyard.

Whatever strange forces called 33 Mill Street home, they had been there for a very long time. The original meeting house burned down in 1821, and the land stood empty for the next fifty years, only occupied by decaying gravestones. Multiple sources said that anyone who tried to buy the land from the town met with misfortune, and there were reports of rabid dogs wandering the graveyard at night, growling at anyone who approached. The gravestones were supposedly always clean, even as the land around them fell into decay.

Ella found a copy of her house's original plans, and she cross-referenced it against the modern excavation map. The gravestones were still standing when her house was built, and a report from the cemetery excavation showed that most of the bodies had been moved along with the headstones.

A much older map marked out the graves circa 1730. They all matched up with the modern map, except for a dark rectangle in the corner of the meeting house. It almost looked like there was a grave right under the corner of the building, one that the modern excavation team never found.

Which meant it was still there, right under Ella's bedroom.

She shivered. The mysterious grave wasn't marked with a name, just a cross and the words _boy, 1684_. The meeting house had been built in 1685. Either the rumors of native burial grounds were true, or the town founders had built a church right on top of a recent, unmarked grave.

Ella didn't believe in ghosts, not really. But she had been taught from childhood to respect the dead, to feed them and clean their homes and keep them company when they visited this world. If you didn't, they might come back to wreak havoc on the living.

That night, Ella went to three different family-owned groceries in two different towns, returning with bags full of incense and fake paper money. Back at the apartment, she grabbed a bag of Cheetos and a bottle of beer, then descended into the basement.

As much as Ella loved old houses, she found basements creepy. Houses in California didn't have them, let alone unfinished ones with dangling cobwebs and patchy plaster walls. The low ceiling beams and musty, decaying smell made it feel like she was climbing down into a grave.

That feeling got worse as Ella climbed over boxes into the far corner, underneath her bedroom. This corner was full of shadows, home to nothing but a rusty old bike and a half-rotten wood plank. It wasn't hard to picture this as a sad, neglected gravesite.

Ella crouched on the floor and lit a stick of incense. There were prayers for this sort of thing, but Ella didn't know any of them, so she just set out a small offering of Cheetos and poured some beer on top. Moving away from the wood, she lit the paper money on fire and watched the flames flutter on the concrete.

"I'm sorry," Ella said. It should've felt weird, talking to herself in a dirty basement, but a strange sense of comfort was settling over her. "You must be lonely down here. They forgot about you when they moved the graveyard, but I know you're here. I'll take care of you." Ella felt compelled to bow. As soon as her head touched the cold concrete, she smelled something fresh and wet, like summer rain on grass. 

She waited for the incense to burn out, then went back upstairs. When she came down again the next day, the Cheetos and the ashes from the paper were gone.

-

One night, Ella was walking home from the library when a tall young man in a hoodie bumped into her. Ella was about to apologize when she felt the sharp point of a blade jab into her stomach. An icy jolt of fear ran through her. They were on a dark, wooded path outside campus, no police call boxes in sight.

"Don't scream," the man said. "Just give me your computer and I won't hurt you."

As Ella's shaking fingers fumbled with her backpack, a large dog ran out from the trees and jumped on the man. It was shaggy and black, with pointed ears and a huge, snarling mouth. 

The man yelped and fell to the ground, trying to block the teeth and claws. They tussled for a while, until the dog let out a sharp yelp and the man scrambled to his feet. He looked like he'd seen a ghost. The dog planted itself in front of Ella and growled.

"Jesus Christ," the man said, turning and running down the path. The dog held its position until the man was long gone. Then it turned around and rubbed its nose against Ella's calf.

Ella's eyes stung. She crouched down on the pavement and touched the soft, shaggy fur on the dog's head. "Good dog. You saved me." The dog pushed against her hand, pressing its big body against her like it was trying to shield her from the road. "Good, brave puppy."

When Ella began walking home, the dog walked silently behind her like a shadow. When they got to a better lit street, she noticed it was limping a little, and there was shiny blood reflecting in the fur of its leg. Ella stopped to examine it. She noticed that the dog was a boy, that he wasn't neutered, and that he wasn't wearing a collar.

"Good boy, you took a knife for me. You're such a brave boy." The wound didn't look too deep. "Come with me, I'll get you patched right up." 

Ella took the dog home and fed him a bowl of beef broth. He only snarled at her a little while she cleaned the wound on his leg. As soon as he was bandaged up, he immediately ran into Ella's bedroom and jumped into her bed. She didn't have the heart to kick him out, so she slept with his warm, furry body pressed against her, smelling of the woods.

-

Ella woke up with the unmistakable feeling of another body in her bed. Her eyes flew open to find Johnny from upstairs, lying naked next to her with tattered strips of bandage wrapped around his bicep. He was watching her with curious yellow-brown eyes.

"How long have you been here?" Ella asked. She knew she should look away from his naked body, but she couldn't make herself do it.

"Three hundred and thirty-four years," Johnny said. 

Ella laughed nervously. "I meant how long have you been in my bed."

"Since last night. When you took care of me." He stretched, and Ella could see a long cut on the inside of his arm. "That's supposed to be my job. I took care of the graves, but now they're gone, so I take care of the house."

A million small pieces clicked together in Ella's brain. "Were you killed to protect the dead in the churchyard? A church grim?"

Johnny frowned. "No, I was sick. It was a very long time ago, all my memories are rusty." He reached out and played with a strand of Ella's hair. "You brought food to my grave. No one's ever done that before."

Ella smiled. "No dead person should be lonely. The afterlife is lonely enough." She combed her fingers through Johnny's dark hair, and he growled happily, which made her giggle. "Are you trapped here forever, then?"

"Not trapped. It's my home." He smiled shyly. "And I get to spend time with pretty college girls."

Carefully, Johnny leaned forward and kissed her. Ella kissed back lazily, enjoying the warmth of his skin, huddled under her blankets in the cold October morning.

**Author's Note:**

> I love black dog stories, and I've had something like this rattling around in my head for a long time. I hope you like it!


End file.
